Photo: Calvin Hanson | Unsplash
At least 90,000 descendants of Sephardic Jews have become citizens of Portugal or Spain since 2015, when those countries passed laws offering a naturalization process as atonement for the Inquisition, a 15th-century campaign of religious persecution against Jews in the Iberian Peninsula. Spain has granted citizenship to 36,000 applicants, 23% of the 153,000 who applied. Portugal has granted citizenship to 63% of 86,000 applicants. Many thousands of applications are still pending review. Spain has rejected at least 3,019 applications, all but one of them in 2021, when the procedure was toughened, and also declined to decide on many cases, and the window to complete applications is closing. Portugal has rejected only a few hundred individuals. Spain initially allowed applications for only three years, but extended the deadline twice. Applicants who applied before September 2021 have until February 2022 to complete notarization of their application. In both countries, the official Jewish community vets applications and pass on only the ones that it deems credible.
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